Dynasty Warriors 6: Empires

It wouldn’t be that unfair to assume that most players familiar with the Dynasty Warriors franchise have long awaited a breath of fresh air that injected new ideas into the series. There have been a couple of expansions released that aimed to achieve this alongside previous core Dynasty Warriors titles, such as the Special and  Xtreme versions. Yet is the Empires games that introduce a stronger element of strategy, and something that this time around reveals new strengths whilst highlighting recurring weaknesses.

Initially, upon loading the game up fans of the series will notice that the Free mode is not available in this title, with only a series of five campaigns available in Empire Mode to the player. Whilst this was an initial worry, the campaigns will consume many hours up before being anywhere near completed so therefore shouldn’t end up being too much of a concern.

Within the campaign, you are now able to perform one of three roles – vagrant, officer and ruler – which are initially dependant upon which character selection you make.

As a vagrant, you will be able to independently move around the various provinces of China and hire yourself out as a mercenary. You can then opt to join the leader that owns a certain province, and help them to attempt to unite China under their banner. A rather evil touch to the game play, is that if you feel that a battle isn’t necessarily going in your favour – you can defect to the other side in battle, and start crushing your former comrades if you so desire! If you’re feeling a bit more independent, then you can also cause a civilian uprising to become a ruler yourself and create your own faction to aim to sweep across China.

Once you join a leader you’ll become an Officer (or you will already be one depending on your character selection). Taking the officer role, you will be given assignments by your ruler and these can range from delivering messages to fellow officers, defending occupied provinces from attack, or invading neighbouring provinces. If you stay under their rule, you’ll level up in rank under their command and will be able to make suggestions during Council meetings as to your next move. Whilst on the lower ranks, there is the chance that your suggestions will be overruled by higher officers however.

Finally choosing to be a ruler, whether by successfully causing an uprising or character selection, you gain all power and control over your faction. Each turn you are able to draw a card, that may be used to spend your current resources to gain beneficial advantages over the coming in-game months. During these brief periods between battles, you can also use the gold that you acquire to purchase abilities, weapon upgrades, items and horses. Alongside this, if you combine certain items and gems that you acquire through the game – you can use these to insert specific power-ups into one of four available slots in your weapon, for use within battles. Such abilities include unleashing fire, lightning, ice and earth spells, temporary speed boosts, increase defense etc – there are certainly plenty of options here for players to fine-tune characters to their own preferences.

As for the actual game play, it is here where I felt most disappointment in what was proving to be a very promising title. Although the power up abilities provide new dynamics to the game, the core hack n’ slash battles remain as repetitive as in previous titles. Graphically the combat is more fluid, yet characters continually perform the same combo animations over and over again – this is a consistent problem that has occurred throughout the series, and is something that really needs addressing. However, there a few good features. There is a great sense of strategy that provides the player with more direction during battle. The player, rather than just rush for the enemy commander, must actively capture and link allied bases up to the enemies main camp. Once this is accomplished, you can then lower the defenses of the enemy camp and lure out the opposing leader. Another neat touch, is that upon pushing select – a horse will gallop to your side (how romantic!), and allow you to traverse the, sometimes large, maps with much more ease.

There are five campaigns in total, that cover story lines found in previous titles. Yet, the length of game play will last players quite a while and each campaign can be tackled in a variety of ways.

Alongside the campaign is  an Edit Officer mode that allows you to fully customise the appearance and combat style of your own officer. Since release, more armour has been released via free DLC and the depth of customisation is fantastic.

For long term fans, there are also a great deal of unlockable extras. The player will gain points through achieving certain objectives, completing campaigns, and finishing mercenary missions. These may then be spent on unlocking character artwork, new costumes, voice samples and wallpapers – treated as a fan service this doesn’t get any better.

Regardless of the repetitive combat, Dynasty Warriors 6: Empires remains to be one of the strongest titles in the franchise – including much more depth and proving to be much more replayable than any of the series’ previous titles.

Lost Gamer Verdict: 7/10